EXHIBITION: April-September 2022
OPENING TIMES: Visible everyday from Ilkeston Road. To fully access Ejaradini: Saturday, 9am - 5pm, or by appointment
LOCATION: Primary’s Plinth Façade
Ejaradini is an art installation and garden created by South African artist collaborative MADEYOULOOK (Molemo Moiloa and Nare Mokgotho). The exhibition features archival images, plants, and text on the façade of Primary. Ejaradini reflects on Black urban gardening, land, and plant life in South Africa and Britain through visual and nature-based storytelling.
The idea for this garden was developed from research gathered on South African urban Black gardening practices, both historical and contemporary. To MADEYOULOOK, the township garden is a claim of landedness and of relation, in places where belonging cannot be assumed. The township garden makes space for personalised labour and for individual time. Township gardens are, for many who plant them, a source of food, of pleasure and of refuge.
We built this garden as a kind of sanctuary from the conversations with both South African and British gardeners of colour. It is a model, taken from township gardens, for how people might create their own space-time, individually and communally. This garden is yours, and yours to use, to spend time in, in whatever way suits you.
The exhibition is the first time that Primary has utilised the street-facing outdoor space on the Grade II listed building, visible from Ilkeston Road. Watch the exhibition shift and change in response to the landscape and environment during the growing season.
The Ejaradini installation at Primary is made possible through the contributions of Alex Pain, Primary Curators and gardener Audrey Leach. It is part of Here, There & Everywhere, a collaborative programme led by New Art Exchange with Delfina Foundation, Eastside Projects, QUAD/FORMAT, Primary, MAC and The Tetley, and funded by Ambition for Excellence (Arts Council England).
Portrait of a Black Gardener by Harold Gilman, c1905. Image courtesy of the Garden Museum, acquired in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society and purchased with the assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Monument Trust, and the Art Fund.
